Version 105 of Windows Inspection Tool Set

Updated 2013-12-13 14:37:46 by APN

News

APN 2011/10/30: Windows Inspection Tool Set (WiTS) 3.0.25 has been released. Major changes since 2.1 are support for new Windows platforms, 64-bit versions, and greatly enhanced view filters.

See [L1 ] for details, downloads and source.

See [L2 ] for a detailed list of changes since previous releases.

What is WiTS?

Windows Inspection Tool Set slices a running Windows system multiple ways, providing cross-linked, filtered views of Windows components.

  • View properties of processes, network connections, users, services and more in customizable tables
  • Navigate between objects via richly cross-linked views
  • Filter displayed items with flexible user defined filters
  • Focus on changing data with enhanced change display modes
  • Customize displayed information and layouts to focus on areas of interest.
  • Track and monitor resources and system activity such as process startup, network connections, logins and more with optional recording to disk
  • Filter and search for Windows events through an integrated view of Windows event logs
  • Quickly access functions via the taskbar and hotkeys

Currently supported object types include:

  • Operating system and hardware
  • Processes
  • Services
  • Users
  • Groups
  • Logon sessions
  • Drives and volumes
  • Local and remote shares
  • Network interfaces
  • Network connections
  • Loaded modules
  • Kernel drivers
  • Windows event log

WiTS is built using (amongst other packages) Tcl/Tk 8.6, tktreectrl, TWAPI, Snit, and tklib.

Project links

Home page - http://windowstoolset.sourceforge.net

Project page - http://sourceforge.net/projects/windowstoolset

Mercurial repository - http://sourceforge.net/p/windowstoolset/code

Screen shot

http://windowstoolset.sourceforge.net/listview3-detail-labeled.png

General discussion

escargo 26 Feb 2007 - Somewhat against my will I have Windows Vista on a newly acquired laptop. I imagine that there are going to start being a lot of Windows Vista questions about various Tcl and Tk functions and applications. Are there any known issues with WITS and Vista? APN There are no known issues only because it has never been tested! My guess is that there will be issues with TWAPI which it uses and possibly with Tile as well. Unfortunately, I have neither a license for Vista, nor the hardware capable of running it. In case you do want to try it, the installer will refuse to install on Vista (I think), so you will need to install elsewhere and copy the wits.exe executable. Please post back with results if you do try it.

escargo 27 Feb 2007 - I put the wits.exe (along with the directories it came in) in my SanDisk Cruzer Micro 4.GB USB Flash memory device. I double-clicked on wits.exe and it errored out. Then I selected it again, but right clicked on it and picked "Run as Administrator." Then it worked. I haven't tested everything, but what I have tried has worked. It looks just like a native Windows Aero application.


HE 27 Feb 2007 - Why is wits distributed as msi-installer file (1.1.1) or as setup.exe(2.0 beta)? The version 1.1.1 contains an Starpack. This can used without any other installation (Works for me on XP, w2000, w2k-server). APN Both versions contain a wits.exe that can be used standalone. As to why an installer is used, it's because I want it to be as close to a conventional Windows app as possible - create shortcuts in the Start menu, show up in the Add/Remove programs, leave nothing behind on disk or in the registry when uninstalled etc. In the longer run, I also hope to add other utilities so it will not be a single executable. HE Perhaps it is possible additional to provide the starkit/starpack? MHo I see absolutely no reason for using windows installer (msi) technology in this case. To understand the misterious msi, one have to study thousands of documents over three months. In old MSDOS days, copy *.* was the prefered way, perhaps editing a little clear-text config here and there afterwords. What about an alternative installation archive (.ZIP or so) with .exe and .kit inside? APN Sorry I don't plan on doing this. I guess I just don't see it as that big a deal to install. Eventually I want this to be on the standard freeware sites (non-Tcl) so I would like it to follow the standard practice most packages use. Those who want just wits.exe to carry around can just copy it and uninstall. If one of you does take the trouble of creating a zip or whatever, please remember to include the full nuvola.zip image archive as well since it is under LGPL. For a future release, I plan on U3-enabled distribution - that I'll probably make just a simple exe.

LV It might be useful if HE would discuss why they care about how the code is distributed? I've not tried this tool, because in general, on my xp system, I cannot get permission to run the various normal MSDOS installers. I can, however, make use of starpack applications. So for me, in general, I prefer starpacks. As I said, I've not tried the installers for this app, so I don't know whether or not it would work. I don't care to raise the security alerts. I do note, however, that the Vista report above talks about not being able to run the application except as administrator. That definitely means I won't be able to use it...


2007-12-27 Ro: Great work, Ashok. Been using it this morning and enjoy it. Will keep it in my toolbox, especially useful to me is the netstat-like functionality and the process information. Overall a nice use of twapi. Another feature I like is the network shares list.

I second the request to get rid of MSI; you should distribute it as a single .exe. I know a lot of the freeware guys like that too. Lean and mean and all that jazz.

You can copy other utility exe's you want to bundle to a temp folder from the starpack if you wanted a single exe.

The Network Connections window could be less cpu intensive. I've got a lot of connections listed there; it could stand to be faster. APN In 3.0, displays of large number of objects should be MUCH faster as WiTS now uses tktreectrl instead of tablelist.

Thanks for a useful tool. Also, the look is very native; I can tell you spent a lot of time on that, and it shows.